CHAPTER VI.
THE MORAL INSIGHT.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths.
Shelley, Epipsychidion.
We have needed to dwell on our ethical skepticism,
to experience the real strength of its doubts,
in order that we should be able to get new and
better methods of construction for our own doctrine.
Deep as is the truth that lies at the basis of many
ethical doctrines now either doubted or abandoned,
one thing always seems defective about their fashion
of building. This one defect has made us question
their worth as theories. And our theoretical doubt,
as we dwelt upon it, has become practical. We
have seen how this ethical skepticism leads to the
gloomiest pessimism. Both the skepticism and the
pessimism we must meet fairly and fearlessly. And
we must ask them how even they themselves are
possible.
I.
Our skeptical criticism of ethical theories has
been so far either internal or external. We have
criticised each doctrine in itself, questioning either
its consistency or its inner completeness; or else we have criticised it with reference to other doctrines.
In the first case our criticism led to no general
skepticism, and had importance only in the special
case. But the other kind of criticism was of more
importance, and took another turn. We said to
the doctrine: “Perfect as your system may be in
itself, your assumption of your highest end always
finds over against itself an equally stubborn
assumption of an exactly opposing end. And you have no
proof to offer for your rejection of that end. You
simply insist upon calling it a diabolical end; you
hurl at it your anathema. Now we, who have
wanted proof, not mere enthusiasm, we, who stand
critically before your doctrine, and view it from
without, and desire to know why we are to accept
it, we feel a skeptical indifference about your end,
as soon as we compare it with the opposing end,
and as soon as comparing, we find the difference
between them to be one that rests, not on demonstrable
truth, but on a mere kind of caprice. Practically
we may agree with you in choosing, as men
of action, your aim. Our personal caprice may
agree with yours. But theoretically we cannot
justify this aim. We find, in all that you say, no
objective moral truth, but only somebody’s capricious
resolution. And even if we chance to accept your
resolution, who knows when we shall change our
minds, and begin acting in some new way, so that
what we now call good shall be called evil? In
brief, if there is to be possible anything more than
moral preaching, if there is to be anything worthy
of the name of demonstrated moral doctrine, then all your discussion must lead to something not
dependent on the bare choice of individual moral
agents. But in truth what you give us is just the
fact of your choice. And hence it is that we are
skeptics.”
What does this our skepticism mean? Unreflective,
self-satisfied skepticism always means mental
death; but in self-critical skepticism, observant of
itself as of everything else, moves the very life-blood
of philosophy. And of this the whole of the present
book will try to be an illustration. Just here, therefore,
we want to be as watchful of our skepticism as
we were of the systems whose theoretical weakness
led us hither. What is the sense of this theoretical
skepticism of our present attitude? On our reply
all else turns. And our reply is: This skepticism
expresses an indifference that we feel when we
contemplate two opposing aims in such a way as
momentarily to share them both. For the moment we
realize equally these warring aims. They are ours.
The conflict is in us. The two wills here represented
are our will. And for this reason, and for this only,
can we feel the skeptical indecision. Had we the
will to choose the one end alone, we should
unhesitatingly choose it, and should not see enough of the
opposing will to be skeptics. Had we only the will
that chooses the opposing end, we should feel equally
indifferent to the first. Had we neither will at all
in mind, did we realize neither one of the opposing
ends, we should be feeling no hesitation between
them. Our doubt arises from the fact that
momentarily and provisionally we are in the attitude of assuming both. Our indifference is not the indifference
of ignorance, but of knowledge; not of failure
to understand either end, but of readiness to realize
both ends. Hence it follows that moral skepticism
is itself the result of an act, namely, of the act by
which we seek to realize in ourselves opposing aims
at the same time. This observation is of the greatest
importance to us, and we must dwell upon it. It
shows us that above all our skepticism is the supreme
End that makes the skepticism itself possible.
The ethical aims themselves are all of them the
expression of somebody’s will. Their conflict is the
conflict of wills. Doubt about them depends upon
the realization of their existence and of their
opposition. Therefore this doubt depends for its very
existence on the conditions of this realization. We
have tried to state what the conditions are. To
realize opposing ends so completely that one feels a
genuine doubt which of them to accept, implies, we
say, the simultaneous provisional acceptance of both.
And this may be shown in a more popular psychological
way, as well as in a more general philosophical
way. We take the psychological way first.
How can I know that there is anywhere a will, W,
that chooses for itself some end, E? Really to know
this implies something more than mere outer
observation of the facts. One must repeat in one’s own
mind more or less rapidly or imperfectly this will,
W, that one conceives to exist in somebody else.
And this need of repetition is a well-known
psychological truth, very easily illustrated by all sorts of
commonplace facts. Let us refer to some of these. To think of a bodily act is to perform the act, or
at least mentally to initiate the performance of the
act. According to Professor Bain’s now generally
accepted principle, the memory or the conception of
an act is physiologically connected with the fainter
excitation of just the same nerve-tracts as would be
more intensely excited in the real performance of
the act. Therefore it is true that to think of
yawning is to initiate a yawn, to think of walking is to
initiate steps; and, in case of any excitable person,
or in case of any momentary predisposition to
perform the act, the conception may immediately
become the act, because the nascent excitation involved
in the conception of the act may at once pass over
into the completer excitation, and the ideal deed
may become a visible fact. Thus the excited man,
if not checked by company, may at once talk aloud
to himself, his thoughts becoming words. If very
much excited, he may mutter to himself even in the
presence of company. He is much more apt to do
this if he thinks not only of the words themselves,
but of the act of speaking them, namely, if he
imagines himself talking to somebody, and emphatically
bringing his thoughts home to that other. In
a weak state of body, this tendency to repeat an act
whenever one conceives it may become quite
distressing. To think of vomiting may mean to vomit.
Or again, to think of laughter or of tears may in
such a case make one laugh or cry. Hence the weak
man may dislike to begin laughing, because he
knows that, other exciting causes apart, the mere
memory that he has laughed may keep him laughing afresh long after the sense of the ridiculous has
passed away, so that to begin laughing may mean
total exhaustion before he can stop.
Imitation rests at least in part upon this tendency.
An act is performed, we witness it, we see or know
how it is done, we conceive the effort that would
lead to the performance of it, and forthwith this
conception becomes the performance. We imitate the
gesture of the actor or of the story-teller before us,
and we feel an inner imitation of many acts, even
though we suppress the outward signs. In general,
for us to realize an act means that we shall do it,
either in outward fact, or through a nascent performance
that is not outwardly visible. Much of the
recently so-called “mind-reading,” more accurately
named by some psychologists “muscle-reading,”
rests upon this foundation. For the conception of
acts that are not outwardly performed is often
indicated by slight motions or tensions of arm or of
fingers, or of the whole body, and the muscle-reader,
getting some close contact with his subject, amuses a
company by interpreting these unseen, but readily felt
signs of the thoughts of his subject. Very deeply do
such facts enter into the structure of our mental life.
Mr. Galton, investigating word-associations, found in
many cases that the idea immediately aroused by a
word was a sort of dramatic reproduction of the act
expressed by the word. This dramatic reproduction
consisted, at least in part, in the feeling of effort in
those muscles that would be concerned in performing
the act itself. If the momentary association first
aroused by the sudden and unexpected sight of the word involves this dramatic imitation of the act
named, how much more would the thought involve
the dramatic repetition of the act, if one were to dwell
upon the nature of this act, and were fully to realize
its nature in his own mind. So much then for
psychological illustration of the view that we are here
advancing. If two opposing fashions of action are
present to our minds, and if mentally we are trying
to realize them both, then mentally we are seeking
to reproduce them both. Our skeptical hesitation
between them expresses our effort to attain mentally
both these ends at once. For what we have said
about bodily acts will apply equally well to what we
usually call mental acts, and even to general
resolutions, all of which have a physical side, and are apt
to be symbolized by some bodily gesture that we
mentally or outwardly repeat when we think of the
act or of the resolution in question.
But all this is not a bare accident of the psychological
structure of our minds; it is a philosophical
necessity. What represents a Will but a Will? Who
would know what it is to have an end unless he
actually had ends himself? Who can realize a given
aim save by somehow repeating it in himself? And
so it is rationally and universally necessary that one
shall realize the end of a moral system by reproducing
in himself the will that accepts this end. But,
on the other hand, in so far forth as he reproduces
this will alone, he cannot refrain from accepting the
end. In so far forth as he reproduces this will, it is
his will. And the end is his end. Therefore our
skepticism itself was a hesitation, resulting from the realization of several opposing ends, and from a
simultaneous reproduction of the wills that aimed at
them. Therefore, as we see, absolute ethical
skepticism would not really be total absence of moral aim,
but would rather be the neutrality that would result
from a provisional acceptance of all the conflicting
aims in the world of action. Absolute ethical
skepticism, if it were actually possible without self-destruction,
would still presuppose an end, namely, the effort
to harmonize in one moment all the conflicting aims
in the world of life. It would not be what it had
supposed itself to be. Absolute skepticism would thus
be founded on absolute benevolence. Its own aim
would he harmony and unity of conduct. But just
for that reason is absolute skepticism self-destructive.
Possibly this result may be somewhat unexpected.
But did not the very pessimism of our last chapter
illustrate it? Why this pessimism? This despair
of life, what was it but the sense of the hopelessness
of our task? What made the task seem hopeless?
And what was the task? The task was the
formation of an harmonious ideal of life. This task
seemed hopeless, because we felt that the actual
ideals of life among men are in deadly conflict. Our
pessimism was after all not what it seemed to us to
be. It was not the bare renunciation of all aims;
it was the effort to satisfy them all, embittered by
the sense that they were in seemingly hopeless
conflict. Even our pessimism had its ideal. Without
its ideal it would have experienced no despair. The
conflict of aims would have meant no evil. The pessimistic
despair was the natural outcome of our skepticism, solely because our skepticism was itself a
realization of the aims with which men live, and of the
warfare of these aims.
From the world of dead facts, we had said, you
can get no ethical doctrine. Physical truth never
gives moral doctrine. Therefore the world of facts
seemed to stand on one side, and the world of moral
aims seemed to stand on the other, no logical
connection being discoverable between them. This was our
theoretical objection to the ethical doctrines that we
examined. Separate as they were from the world
of facts, they seemed to dwell alone, ungrounded and
conflicting acts of caprice. Yet for them to pass
over to the world of facts was to lose their ethical
character. But now we seek to overcome our
difficulty by considering, not the world of physical facts
themselves, but the world of ends. And this world
we consider, not now in detail, but as a whole.
What highest end is suggested, we ask, to him who
realizes for himself this whole world of ends? The
very end, we answer, that, as first dimly seen, forced
upon us our skeptical pessimism. Whoso realizes an
end, his, for the time being, is that end. And since
it is his end, he mentally wills to realize it in ideal
perfection. But whoso realizes the various conflicting
aims in the world, his are all these aims at the
moment of insight, when, so far as in him lies, he
realizes them, and mentally desires their success. In
proportion as his realization is or can be catholic and
genuine, his will becomes, for the time, these
conflicting wills. In him is now the warfare. He feels
in his own person the bitterness of the universal strife. And therefore it is that, in the first moment
of his new insight, the pessimism comes to him.
“This warfare cannot be ended,” he despairingly
says. But has he thus uttered the final word? For
he has not yet added the reflection that we are here
insisting upon. Let him say: “Then I too have an
end, far-off and unattainable though it seems, and
so my will is not aimless. I desire to realize these
aims all at once. Therefore I desire their harmony.
This is the one good that comes up before my fancy
as above all the various conflicting individual goods
of the various separate aims. This Higher Good
would be attained in a world where the conflict
ceased. That would be the Ideal World, where all
possible aims were pursued in absolute harmony.”
Barren at first sight this reflection may appear.
It may have been unexpected, but we shall certainly
be disposed at first to call it fruitless. For here are
the aims, and they do conflict. In the actual world
there is ceaseless warfare. Only the wager of
battle can decide among the opposing ethical faiths.
But now, if some idealist comes who says that his
insight gives him the higher ideal of Harmony, then
one may reply that his ideal is, in its confessed
nature, a mere fantasy of his benevolent imagination.
Such harmony never can be realized, unless indeed
some day, by the aid of bigger battalions, some one
of the ideals overcomes all the rest. Yet is our
idealist so lightly to be answered? Can he not at
once reply: “My Ideal is thus defined, and fantastic
though it be, far-off though it seems, it is still an
ideal towards which I can direct my efforts. For behold, made practical, brought down from its
lonesome height, my Ideal very simply means the Will
to direct my acts towards the attainment of universal
Harmony. It requires me to act with this my insight
always before me. It requires me to consider
all the conflicting aims that will be affected by each
one of my acts, and to dispose my act with reference
to them all. It sets up this new moral principle
before me, a principle perfectly catholic, and above all
that skepticism which we have felt with regard to
the special moral aims. This Principle is: So act as thou wouldst will to act if all the consequences of thy act for all the aims that are anywhere to be affected by this act, could be realized by thee now and in this one indivisible moment. Or more briefly put:
Act always in the light of the completest insight into all the aims that thy act is to affect. This
rule is no capricious one, chosen for some individual
reason, but an universal maxim, since its choice
depends on the general realization of all the conflicting
aims of the world of life. And thus we have after
all found, in the very heart of our skepticism itself,
a moral doctrine. In the midst of the warfare of
individual wills, we have caught sight of an Universal
Will.
II.
“But no,” some one will say: “All this is still
mere caprice. Has it not in fact fallen already a
prey to the same skepticism that pursued other moral
aims? For first, you have tried to found it on a
physical fact, namely, on the fact that only by a given effort of will one thinking being can realize the will
of another. But does this tell me that I ought thus
to realize the conflicting wills that are in the world?
And if I do not, what significance has this physical
fact for me? But, on the other hand, physical facts
aside, is not your doctrine just your capricious
determination to respect the conflicting aims that exist in
the world?”
This objection, if made, would be founded on a
misunderstanding of what we have discovered. We
have discovered something that has a value for us
quite independently of its importance as a mere
physical fact. We set out to find a distinction between
right and wrong. Our difficulty always was that,
since this distinction involves the acceptance of a
highest aim as the standard of judgment, and since
there are numerous aims possible, we always were
confused by the fact that among these manifold aims
there was found no ground of choice. For to show
any reason why we have chosen in a given way
between two of these aims, is to have a third aim that
includes one and excludes the other. And the choice
of this third aim seemed again just as accidental as
the first choice would have been without this third
aim to justify it. Thus our original thought of an
aim, as the foundation of an ethical doctrine, had
been shattered before our eyes into a spray of
separate possible or actual aims, and we saw no way of
collecting this spray again into unity. If that was
the reason for our skepticism, then of course
anything more that we may say about ethics must
presuppose a hearer who can feel such skepticism, at least provisionally. The physical fact that he can
understand the nature of our doubt is indeed
presupposed ere we can go further, but that is no objection
to our progress. The physical fact that we have an
intelligent hearer must always be presupposed by
us. If one cannot feel the doubt, then he cannot
undertake any ethical inquiry. We only say to
him: “If you doubt about the acceptance of a moral
aim, this that we have pointed out to you is the real
reason for your doubt. If now you understand your
doubt, then you are actually in the state that we have
described above. Your doubt has in fact a general
character. It means a provisional moral skepticism,
founded on an insight into the conflict of aims.
This insight means skepticism because, and only
because, you are at the moment of insight yourself
possessed of the conflicting aims, yourself at war with
yourself, and therefore undecided. This spray of
aims into which your first pure idea of a moral aim
as such has been scattered, this confused and
blinding cloud of purposes, represents for you your own
moral position. Divided in yourself, disunited,
confused, you float cloud-like and inactive, seeking unity
of aim and finding none. But if you reflect on all
this, you see that in truth you occupy the position
that we have above described. You really have
still a highest aim. You seek unity. You desire the
warfare to cease. You have an ideal. All this is,
to be sure, a physical fact, dependent on your
nature as voluntary being; but it is not valuable just
for that reason alone, but for the reason that, in
discovering this fact, you have discovered what you were seeking for. You have found that you are in
possession of an ideal. You cannot get away from
that ideal save by repeating the very process that
has brought you to it. Your moral insight is
attained, and the foundation of your doctrine is no
longer a particular aim that is accepted by a mere
caprice of one individual, but it is the necessary aim
that arises in the mind of any one who actually
realizes the warfare of the particular aims. It is the
ideal of ideals. It is the absolute ideal that arises
for you out of the consideration of the separate
ideals. Each of them was relative to the mood of
the man who happened to choose it; this Ideal is
relative only to the insight that comprehends the
whole moral world. Unable as we men are fully to
realize just the actual nature of every single aim in
the world of life, still we are able fully to realize
certain conflicting aims; and, realizing this conflict, we
can form for ourselves the notion of that absolute
realization that means, as we have seen, first the
skeptical despair of our last chapter, and then, by a
deeper reflection, the ideal that we have just set
forth above. Thus we no longer are capriciously
deciding upon the worth of physical facts as such.
We are passing a necessary judgment upon ideals as
ideals.
And we have tried to show that this our resulting
ideal is not a barren one. At first sight it seems so.
At first sight one says: “This harmony is a self-contradictory
dream.” But no, not self-contradictory
is the dream; for, if we cannot perfectly realize this
new ideal, if absolute harmony is unattainable, one can still walk in the light of the ideal. One can say:
“I will act as if all these conflicting aims were mine.
I will respect them all. I will act in the light that
has brought me my moral insight. And to that end
I will act at each moment as one would act who
saw himself about to suffer in his own person and
at one time all the consequences of his act for all
the aims that are to be affected by what he does.”
But now the ideal becomes practical, now it ceases
to be barren. It is no longer the mere wish that
was at the heart of our skepticism, a wish gloomy,
inactive, terrified at the warfare that is in the world.
It is a cool determination. It says: “This disease
of conflicting aims cannot now be cured, but it shall
be dealt with. These aims are as my own. I will
deal with them as such. I will work for their
harmony.” If one doubts this ideal, then he doubts
the very foundation of ethical doubt itself. But this
is not all that our absolute ideal accomplishes. Not
merely for the moment of insight does this ideal give
an aim; but it extends itself to the other moments
of life. It says: “The highest good would be realizable
only in case not merely the aim of this moment
of insight itself, but the aims of all the conflicting
wills in the world, were brought into conformity to
this insight. The highest good would be attainable
if all the conflicting wills realized fully one another.
For then, not abandoning each its own aim, each
would have added thereto, through insight, the aims
of the others. And all the world of individuals
would act as one Being, having a single Universal
Will. Harmony would in fact be attained.” Therefore our ideal has another precept to give us. It
says: “Act in such wise as to extend this moral
insight to others.” Here is a definite practical aim,
and it justifies us in saying to all the conflicting
wills: “You should respect one another.” For so in
fact they all would do if they had the moral insight.
And to have it, as we now see, is the prerequisite
to the attainment of the highest good, namely, this
ideal Harmony that we seek at the moment of moral
insight.
III.
We fear that such general discussion of what we
have called the moral insight may seem, at first sight,
too abstract to be real. We hasten to a more
concrete study of this insight. Leaving those more
abstract aims that have been used as the foundation of
moral systems, let us study our moral insight as it
applies to the special aims that come into conflict
when a man is dealing with his neighbor. Let us
see how just the considerations that we have applied
to the conflict of ethical aims in general apply
directly to the conflict between selfishness and
unselfishness, which we so long and so vainly considered
in the last chapter. This warfare of selfishness and
unselfishness is indeed not the deepest of moral
problems, and to solve the problem here involved is
not, as some have supposed, to define forthwith the
Highest Good. Yet we shall do well to fix our minds
for the time on this special problem.
Why is selfishness easier to me than unselfishness?
Because it is easier for me to realize my own future, and my own desire about it, than to realize the desires
of my neighbor. My will is the datum; his the dimly-conceived,
remote fact. Hence it seems to me obvious
that his will must be to me less significant than my
own. Therefore he and I are often in deadly
warfare, just because I realize his will not in its inner
nature, but as a foreign power, and because he deals
even so with me. We stand over against each
other like two moral systems, condemning and
fighting each the other. Now, however, there often
appear disinterested moralists, who try to patch up our
differences. We have seen how and why they have
so often failed. They tell me that my neighbor and
I shall give each other much more selfish delight if
we stop fighting and begin coöperating. But that
wise advice in no way touches the root of the
difficulty between us. If we did coöperate for this
reason, we should still be two foreign powers, virtually
discordant. And whenever it happened that either
of us could do better by oppressing or by crushing
the other than by continuing to coöperate with him,
he not only would do so, but, so far as we have seen,
must do so. Another moralist hopes that if we
keep on coöperating long enough, we may evolve
into purely unselfish beings some day. The hope is
a pious one, but gives us no sufficient reason why we
ought to coöperate unselfishly now, when in fact we
are selfish. Yet another moralist asks us to reflect
on the nature of our emotions of pity and sympathy
for each other. We reply that these feelings are
indeterminate in character, and may lead us to do
anything or nothing: for each other. So all these moralists leave my neighbor and me just where we were.
If it is to our personal advantage to fight, we shall
do so; otherwise we may by chance remain for a
while in practical harmony; but, throughout, our
moral aims will remain what they were, selfish and
conflicting.
Forsaking these unsatisfactory attempts to found
a moral doctrine concerning one’s duty to one’s
neighbor, let us try to do what Schopenhauer so
haltingly suggested, namely, to see what moral
insight as moral insight, and not as pity or as far-sighted
egoism, tells us about the moral relations of
selfishness and unselfishness. If a man not merely
pities but knows his neighbor’s will, what moral
ideal does he get? We affirm that insight into the
reality of the neighbor’s will, insight that considers
his will as it is in itself, and that accordingly repeats
it in us, gives us a position above the struggle of
self and neighbor, and lets us see the higher ideal of
Harmony, whose precept is: Act as a being would act
who included thy will and thy neighbor’s will in the
unity of one life, and who had therefore to suffer
the consequences for the aims of both that will
follow from the act of either. This insight is not the
mere emotion of pity nor yet sympathy, but something
different from these, namely, something that
involves the realization, and therefore the reproduction
in us, of the opposing will of the neighbor. This
insight therefore deprives each will in its separateness
of its absolute significance, and commands that
we should act with an equal reference to both. It
says not merely, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” but, “In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou wert
at once thy neighbor and thyself.” “Treat these two
lives as one life.”
We must try to show how this insight leads to this
result. We must try so to bring home the insight
to the reader that he shall in his person accomplish
the act of which we speak, and so come to accept
the ideal upon which we are insisting. It is in
himself that he is to experience this ideal, or else he
will not be able or willing to accept it. We can
only suggest the way. And so we shall try forthwith
to suggest what is the nature of that common
imperfect realization of our neighbor’s life which does not
lead to the moral insight, and then to dwell upon
this insight itself.
IV.
The common sense, imperfect recognition of our
neighbor implies rather realization of the external
aspect of his being, as that part of him which affects
us, than realization of his inner and peculiar world
of personal experience. Let us show this by example.
First, take my realization of the people whom I
commonly meet but do not personally very well know,
e.g. the conductor on the railway train when I
travel. He is for me just the being who takes my
ticket, the official to whom I can appeal for certain
advice or help if I need it. That this conductor has
an inner life, like mine, this I am apt never to realize
at all. He has to excite my pity or some other
special human interest in me ere I shall even begin to
try to think of him as really like me. On the whole, he is for me realized as an automaton. But still
frequently I do realize him in another way, but how?
I note very likely that he is courteous or surly, and
I like or dislike him accordingly. Now courtesy and
discourtesy are qualities that belong not to automata
at all. Hence I must somehow recognize him in this
case as conscious. But what aspect of his
consciousness do I consider? Not the inner aspect of it as
such, but still the outer aspect of his conscious life,
as a power affecting me; that is what I consider. He
treats me so and so, and he does this deliberately;
therefore I judge him. But what I realize is his
deliberate act, as something important to me. It
seldom occurs to me to realize fully how he feels; but
I can much more easily come to note how he is
disposed. The disposition is his state viewed as a power
affecting me.
Now let one look over the range of his bare
acquaintanceship, let him leave out his friends, and the
people in whom he takes a special personal interest;
let him regard for the first the rest of his world of
fellow-men: his butcher, his grocer, the policeman
that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in
his kitchen, his business rivals whom he occasionally
talks to, the men whose political speeches he has
heard or read, and for whom he has voted, with some
notion of their personal characters, — and then all
the rest of the outside world, the Turks or the
Indians, the men of historic fame. Napoleon, Cicero,
Cæsar, the imaginary people in fictions that have
excited little of his stronger emotional interest: how
does he conceive of all these people? Are they not one and all to him ideal or real ways of behavior
towards himself or other people, outwardly effective
beings, rather than realized masses of genuine inner
life, of sentiment, of love, or of felt desire? Does he
not naturally think of each of them rather as a way
of outward action than as a way of inner volition?
His butcher, his newsboy, his servant, — are they not
for him industrious or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite
or uncivil, useful or useless people, rather than
self-conscious people? Is any one of these alive for him
in the full sense, — sentient, emotional, and
otherwise like himself; as perhaps his own son, or his
own mother or wife seems to him to be? Is it not
rather the kind of behavior of these beings towards
him which he realizes? Is it not rather in general
their being for him, not for themselves, that he
considers in all his ordinary life, even when he calls
them conscious? And this being for him is what he
calls their dispositions. They are all good fellows
or bad fellows, good-humored or surly, hateful or
admirable. They may appear even sublime or ideal
beings, as a Caesar might to a student of history.
Yet their inner life need not therefore be realized.
They remain powers, ways of acting, dispositions,
wonderful examples of energy. They are still seen
from without. Not their inner, volitional nature is
realized, but their manner of outward activity; not
what they are for themselves, but what they are for
others.
Such then is our natural realization of our fellows
even when we call them conscious. The imperfect
realization in question extends even to the case of closer affection. Lear realizes in his daughters, or thinks that he realizes, only the dispositions that they express. Real effort to enter into the inner life of their emotions is foreign to his simple and imperious mind. Even when I delight in another’s love, I am still apt to realize rather the disposition than the inner and more personal emotional life that is the cause of this way of behavior. The act is what I want, the voice, the look, thegift, or the other assurance of an energy in harmony with my will. The ordinary emotion of gratitude is another very good illustration of the imperfect realization of our neighbors that accompanies even the plainest verbal recognition of their conscious existence. As I write these words, my heart is just now going out in admiration and respect, not to say affection, to a man whom I but imperfectly know. I feel a desire to do him a favor, if it were possible. Why? Do I reflect on his true nature and needs as a being like myself? Do I feel our common weakness, our common longings? Have I dispelled the illusion of selfishness that separates us? No, — I grieve and am ashamed to confess it, — this being is to me almost as wholly external as my plumber, not much better realized than my walking-stick. I am dwelling not on his own inner life at all. In my mind’s eye I see just his outer form. Yet he has written me a graceful and pleasing letter, expressing his interest in some of my plans, and his desire to help me. I am selfishly delighted to find such help. I have an instinctive feeling that it demands compensation. I
feel an animal delight in being in friendly company.
My gratitude is here no moral emotion at all.
The emotion of sympathy does indeed often tend
to make me realize the other and more completely
internal aspect of my neighbor’s reality; but
sympathy does this in the halting and uncertain way
described in a previous chapter. And at all events,
whatever sympathy leads to, it is not by itself the
insight. And so, to sum up our present way of
studying the illusions of selfishness, we find by these
examples that by nature our neighbor’s conscious
life is realized for us rather as an active agency that
affects our fortunes, than as an inner experience, or
as it is in itself, namely, as a Will; and hence it is
that we are disposed to treat it with coldness, rather
than to respect its true nature. Resistance,
conquest, employment of this agency, seem to us
axiomatic aims of prudence; unselfish respect for its
inner accompanying experiences seems to us a hard
if not a meaningless task. Such is the nature and
ground of the illusion of selfishness.
If now our activity of realization were confined to
the range of common-sense emotions, there would be
no escape from all this. It is our critical reflection
that appears on the scene, saying: “O common
sense, what thou hast realized cannot be all. We
must resolve to recognize more, else will our
resolutions never lose their inconsistency and darkness.
Be honest, O common sense. Is not thy neighbor
after all just a dead fact of nature, an automaton
with certain peculiar energies?” And common sense answers: “No, for is he not most assuredly a
conscious agent, whose action I realize?” “Dost
thou then know that he wills, and not realize what
this will means for him, namely, that he experiences
it?” “No,” answers common sense, “if he wills as
I do, he must experience as I do.” “Realize it
then, and see what thou then wilt do with him.”
And common sense must, we affirm, so realizing,
simply reply, “As he is real, he is as much an
object for my effort as I myself am, in case I can
affect him. Ours is one life.” This common sense
must see, if it fully realizes the neighbor. And if
it realizes his activity, as it always in some fashion
does, then it must come to realize his experience,
and so to realize him fully, so soon as it undertakes
to complete the incomplete act by which it has
begun to realize his will. This completion may be
hastened by pity, or may be hindered by the weakness
that pity often involves; but when it comes, it
must be an act of clear insight, made possible by
the rational nature of our mental life. Whatever
in our thought is done in part, we are ready either
to abandon wholly, or to finish altogether, so soon as
we realize that we have been doing it in part. Our
resolution to recognize an existence cannot remain
confused or self-contradictory when we come to
realize where the confusion and self-contradiction lie.
And as we simply cannot give up recognizing our
neighbor, we must of necessity resolve, when we see
this inconsistency of our natural realization, to
realize him wholly.
Such is our reflective account of the process that, in some form, must come to every one under the proper
conditions. In this process we see the beginning of
the real knowledge of duty to others. The process
is one that any child can and does, under proper
guidance, occasionally accomplish. It is the process
by which we all are accustomed to try to teach humane
behavior in concrete cases. We try to get people to
realize what they are doing when they injure others.
But to distinguish this process from the mere tender
emotion of sympathy, with all its illusions, is what
moralists have not carefully enough done. Our
exposition has tried to take this universally recognized
process, to distinguish it from sympathy as
such, and to set it up before the gates of ethical
doctrine as the great producer of insight.
But when we say that to this insight common
sense must come, under the given conditions, we do
not mean to say: “So the man, once having attained
insight, must act thenceforth.” The realization of
one's neighbor, in the full sense of the word
realization, is indeed the resolution to treat him as if he
were real, that is, to treat him unselfishly. But this
resolution expresses and belongs to the moment of
insight. Passion may cloud the insight in the very
next moment. It always does cloud the insight after
no very long time. It is as impossible for us to
avoid the illusion of selfishness in our daily lives, as
to escape seeing through the illusion at the moment
of insight. We see the reality of our neighbor, that
is, we determine to treat him as we do ourselves.
But then we go back to daily action, and we feel the
heat of hereditary passions, and we straightway forget what we have seen. Our neighbor becomes
obscured. He is once more a foreign power. He is
unreal. We are again deluded and selfish. This
conflict goes on and will go on as long as we live
after the manner of men. Moments of insight, with
their accompanying resolutions; long stretches of
delusion and selfishness: That is our life.
V.
To bring home this view in yet another way to the
reader, we ask him to consider very carefully just
what experience he has when he tries to realize his
neighbor in the full sense that we have insisted upon.
Not pity as such is what we desire him to feel. For
whether or no pity happens to work in him as
selfishly and blindly as we have found that it often
does work, still not the emotion, but its consequences,
must in the most favorable case give us what we
seek. All the forms of sympathy are mere impulses.
It is the insight to which they bring us that has
moral value. And again, the realization of our
neighbor’s existence is not at all the discovery that
he is more or less useful to us personally. All that
would contribute to selfishness. In an entirely
different way we must realize his existence, if we are to
be really altruistic. What then is our neighbor?
We find that out by treating him in thought just
as we do ourselves. What art thou? Thou art now
just a present state, with its experiences, thoughts,
and desires. But what is thy future Self? Simply
future states, future experiences, future thoughts and desires, that, although not now existing for thee,
are postulated by thee as certain to come, and as in
some real relation to thy present Self. What then
is thy neighbor? He too is a mass of states, of
experiences, thoughts, and desires, just as real as thou
art, no more but yet no less present to thy
experience now than is thy future Self. He is not that
face that frowns or smiles at thee, although often
thou thinkest of him as only that. He is not the
arm that strikes or defends thee, not the voice that
speaks to thee, not that machine that gives thee
what thou desirest when thou movest it with the
offer of money. To be sure, thou dost often think
of him as if he were that automaton yonder, that
answers thee when thou speakest to it. But no, thy
neighbor is as actual, as concrete, as thou art. Just
as thy future is real, though not now thine, so thy
neighbor is real, though his thoughts never are thy
thoughts. Dost thou believe this? Art thou sure
what it means? This is for thee the turning-point
of thy whole conduct towards him. What we now
ask of thee is no sentiment, no gush of pity, no
tremulous weakness of sympathy, but a calm, clear
insight.
But one says: “All this have I done from my
youth up. Surely I hold and always have held my
neighbor to be real and no automaton. Surely I
have feared his reproof, have been angry at his
ill-will, have rejoiced in his sympathy, have been
influenced by his opinions, all my life. And yet I have
remained selfish.” Nay, but just at the moment
when thou hadst to act towards him so or so, thou wert no longer quick to realize him. Then it was
that thy passion made him for thee a shadow. Thou
couldst not love him, because thou didst forget who
he was. Thou didst believe in him enough to fear
him, to hate him, to fight with him, to revenge
thyself upon him, to use his wit as thy tool, but not
enough to treat him as real, even as thou thyself art
real. He seems to thee a little less living than thou.
His life is dim, it is cold, it is a pale fire beside thy
own burning desires. He is a symbol of passion to
thee, and imperfectly, coldly, with dull assent, without
full meaning to thy words, thou dost indeed say,
when asked, that the symbol stands for something
real, as real as thyself. But what those words mean,
— hast thou realized it, as, through selfish feeling,
thou dost realize thy equally external future Self?
If he is real like thee, then is his life as bright a
light, as warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee; his
will is as full of struggling desires, of hard problems,
of fateful decisions; his pains are as hateful, his
joys as dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire
and of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred,
realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and
then with clear certainty add: Such as that is for
me, so is it for him, nothing less. If thou dost that,
can he remain to thee what he has been, a picture, a
plaything, a comedy, or a tragedy, in brief a mere
Show? Behind all that show thou hast indeed
dimly felt that there is something. Know that
truth thoroughly. Thou hast regarded his thought,
his feeling, as somehow different in sort from thine.
Thou hast said: “A pain in him is not like a pain ill me, but something far easier to bear.” Thou hast
made of him a ghost, as the imprudent man makes
of his future seK a ghost. Even when thou hast
feared his scorn, his hate, his contempt, thou hast
not fully made him for thee as real as thyself. His
laughter at thee has made thy face feel hot, his
frowns and clenched fists have cowed thee, his sneers
have made thy throat feel choked. But that was
only the social instinct in thee. It was not a full
sense of his reality. Even so the little baby smiles
back at one that smiles at it, but not because it
realizes the approving joy of the other, only because
it by instinct enjoys a smiling face; and even so the
baby is frightened at harsh speech, but not because
it realizes the other’s anger. So, dimly and by
instinct, thou has lived with thy neighbor, and hast
known him not, being blind. Thou hast even
desired his pain, but thou hast not fully realized the
pain that thou gavest. It has been to thee, not
pain in itself, but the sight of his submission, of his
tears, or of his pale terror. Of thy neighbor thou
hast made a thing, no Self at all.
When thou hast loved, hast pitied, or hast
reverenced thy neighbor, then thy feeling has possibly
raised for a moment the veil of illusion. Then thou
hast known what he truly is, a Self like thy present
Self. But thy selfish feeling is too strong for thee.
Thou hast forgotten soon again what thou hadst seen,
and hast made even of thy beloved one only the
instrument of thy own pleasure. Even out of thy power
to pity thou hast made an object of thy vainglory.
Thy reverence has turned again to pride. Thou hast accepted the illusion once more. No wonder that in
this darkness thou findest selfishness the only rule of
any meaning for thy conduct. Thou forgottest that
without realization of thy future and as yet unreal
self, even selfishness means nothing. Thou forgottest
that if thou gavest thy present thought even so
to the task of realizing thy neighbor’s life, selfishness
would seem no more plain to thee than the love of
thy neighbor.
Have done then with this illusion that thy Self
is all in all. Intuition tells thee no more about thy
future Self than it tells thee about thy neighbors.
Desire, bred in thee by generations of struggle for
existence, emphasizes the expectation of thy own
bodily future, the love for thy own bodily welfare,
and makes thy body’s life seem alone real. But
simply try to know the truth. The truth is that all this
world of life about thee is as real as thou art. All
conscious life is conscious in its own measure. Pain
is pain, joy is joy, everywhere even as in thee. The
result of thy insight will be inevitable. The illusion
vanishing, the glorious prospect opens before thy
vision. Seeing the oneness of this life everywhere,
the equal reality of all its moments, thou wilt be
ready to treat it all with the reverence that prudence
would have thee show to thy own little bit of future
life. What prudence in its narrow respectability
counseled, thou wilt be ready to do universally. As
the prudent man, seeing the reality of his future
self, inevitably works for it; so the enlightened man,
seeing the reality of all conscious life, realizing that
it is no shadow, but fact, at once and inevitably desires, if only for that one moment of insight, to
enter into the service of the whole of it.
So the illusion of selfishness vanishes for thy
present thought (alas! not for thy future conduct,
O child of passion!), when thou lookest at what
selfishness has so long hidden from thee. Thou seest
now the universal life as a whole, just as real as thou
art, identical in joy and sorrow. The conflict of
selfishness and unselfishness vanishes. Selfishness is
but a half realization of the truth expressed in
unselfishness. Selfishness says: I shall exist.
Unselfishness says: The Other Life is as My Life.
To realize another's pain as pain is to cease to desire
it in itself. Hatred is illusion. Cowardly sympathy,
that hides its head for fear of realizing the
neighbor’s pain, is illusion. But unselfishness is the
realization of life. Unselfishness leads thee out of the
mists of blind self -adoration, and shows thee, in all
the life of nature about thee, the one omnipresent,
conscious struggle for the getting of the desired. In
all the songs of the forest birds; in all the cries of
the wounded and dying, struggling in the captor’s
power; in the boundless sea, where the myriads of
water-creatures strive and die; amid all the countless
hordes of savage men; in the hearts of all the good
and loving; in the dull, throbbing hearts of all
prisoners and captives; in all sickness and sorrow; in
all exultation and hope; in all our devotion; in all
our knowledge, — everywhere from the lowest to the
noblest creatures and experiences on our earth, the
same conscious, burning, willful life is found, endlessly
manifold as the forms of the living creatures, unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as these
impulses that even now throb in thy own little selfish
heart. Lift up thy eyes, behold that life, and then
turn away and forget it as thou canst; but if thou
hast known that, thou hast begun to know thy duty.
VI.
But this unity that the moral insight has found
for us in life must not be falsely interpreted.
Rightly interpreted, the moral insight will solve for
us many very difficult problems; but we must not
imagine that it shows us all this individual life as
in any mystical sense already actually in the
harmony that we seek. Not because these aims are
already in themselves one, but because we, as moral
seers, unite in one moment of insight the realization
of all these aims, for that reason alone is this life
one for us. It is in this sense alone that the moral
insight gives us a solution of the problem of egoism
and altruism, as well as a foundation for a general
doctrine of the Highest Good. The moral insight
does not enable us to say: These beings have always
actually but blindly sought what was in itself the
Highest Good. We can only say: Each one has
sought in his blindness only what was to him
desirable. And not, save by the realization of the
conflict of desire, can the truly highest good be
conceived. The moral insight discovers harmony not
as already implied in the nature of these blind,
conflicting wills, but as an ideal to be attained by hard
work. We point this out in order to show that we do not
fall into the hackneyed error of those moralists who
insist that they merely tell men what one thing it is
that men have all been blindly seeking. Such
moralists often say: “Our system is but an expression
of the tendency that was always there, latent in
men. It tells them in plain words what they
always wanted, and then it tells them how to get this
end.” This specious pretense of so many moral
systems we have implicitly condemned in the previous
part of our discourse. It constitutes in many cases
that appeal to the physical facts which we have set
aside as always useless and often ungrounded. If
one looks the pretense fairly in the face, how flat
and stale it seems! Yonder vast wealth of conflicting
aims among men, base and noble, devilish and
divine, — what moralist has been able to sum all of
them up in any formula, save in the wholly abstract
formula that we have above referred to, namely,
that all these beings seek what seems to them
desirable. How presumptuous to say to them: “In fact
you all desire this that I formulate in my text-book
of morals.” In fact they do not. And it is absurd
to watch the turnings and twistings of language by
which a moralist tries to make out that they do.
For instance, let the moralist be J. S. Mill, and let
him declare, as he does, that happiness is the one
goal of all men. If happiness includes the attainment
of any possible object of anybody's desire, then
indeed the theory is a truism. But with this truism,
of course, no sort of progress would have been made
in ethics. Mill must tell us something about what sorts of happiness there are, and about what sorts
ought to be sought most of all. He says, as we
know, that there are “higher” and “lower” pleasures,
and that higher pleasures ought to be sought
in preference to the others, the pleasure of the
intellect, of generosity, etc., instead of the sensual
pleasures. What can be the proof? That happiness
was the goal we were to learn, because all men
actually seek it. But that the “higher” happiness is
the goal, rather than a lower form, how do we learn
that? Because men always choose it? In fact they
do not. So Mill has to shift the ground a little.
They do not all of them actually seek it, but they
would seek it if they knew it. Most of them are
ignorant of what they would prize most, namely, of
these “higher” pleasures. But here again Mill
meets a disheartening fact. Most men, if they ever
love “higher” pleasures at all, are found loving
them more for a while in the ideal enthusiasm of
youth than later in the prosaic dullness of middle
life. Men who have known the “higher” happiness
do then deliberately turn away from it. This
is a regular fact of life, well known, and often
lamented. How does this agree with Mill’s doctrine?
Alas! it does not agree, and only by worthless
devices can he conceal from himself the fact. The
people who enjoy the higher know the lower and
reject it. The people who enjoy the lower do not
know of the higher, or, if they ever knew it, they
have forgotten it, or if they have not quite forgotten
the higher, they have “lost capacity for it.” As if
all this could not just as plausibly be said from the side of the “lower” pleasures. Just as if it were
not constantly said from that side in every good
drinking-song, with a result precisely opposed to
Mill’s. In fact Mill is driven in this controversy
with imaginary opponents to the worst subterfuge
possible for so skilled a thinker, when he at last
says that the pleasure which seems the higher of two
pleasures to the “most of those who have
experienced both” is actually the higher. For thus, to
keep up the show of merely interpreting to men their
actual will. Mill has to appeal to the opinion of the
majority, has to use a purely practical habit of
deliberative assemblies for the purpose of deciding a
question of theory, and then has most absurdly to
declare that a man's experience about his own
pleasure is worth nothing as a test of its value
unless the majority of his fellows agree with him in
his judgment.
In fact all this is benevolent trifling. Men declare
at one time one pleasure to be “highest,” that is,
most desirable, and at another time they declare
another pleasure to be the only desirable one.
Different men persist in having different aims. To
define their duty by telling them that they all have
one aim is wrong. From the point of view of the
moral insight all this struggling life becomes one;
but that is not because it as yet ceases to struggle,
but because the being possessed of the moral insight
comes to realize it all at once. For him it is one,
because he identifies himself with the struggling
aims. He seeks their harmony, and must do so if
he have the insight. But they are not in harmony as yet at all; else would he have no work to do.
Let him then not deceive himself. The conflict itself
is real and not illusory. The illusion lies in the fact
that no one of the fighters realizes the inner life of
the others. But to overcome that illusion in any
soul is not to show that all the fighters have been
desiring the same thing.
J. S. Mill is by no means our only case of the
effort to convince people that they always have had
one object of search, which the moralist has but to
name in order to bring peace on the earth.
Bentham undertook the same task, and showed in his
blunt way as much skill in subterfuge as he ever
accused his opponents of showing, while he tried to
make out that all men always have been
Benthamites, to whom pleasure was the only good. Mr.
Spencer in his turn tries to define the Good so that
it shall agree not only with the popular usage of the
word good, but also with the Spencerian notion of
what constitutes the Good. If anywhere a usage of
the word appears that does not agree with the
Spencerian usage, Mr. Spencer insists, sometimes, that,
if cross-questioned, the man who so uses it would
have to come over to the Spencerian usage, and
sometimes that the usage in question is a survival
in culture of a savage notion, or that it is in some
other way insignificant. Thus the proof of Mr.
Spencer’s view about the nature of the ideal becomes
so simple and easy that when, a little further
on, it is necessary to recognize the existence of
pessimists, Mr. Spencer finds no difficulty in regarding
it as perfectly plain that a man can become a pessimist only in case he believes that the Spencerian
ideal of the Good is unattainable. Thus axioms are
manufactured whenever we need them.
All this is mere neglect of whatever ideals do not
at once fit into one’s own ideal. Such neglect is
unworthy of an ethical inquirer. Yet it has been
frequently committed in recent times, and it is
committed whenever a man endeavors or pretends, as
Professor Clifford also very skillfully endeavored
and pretended, to found ethical science wholly upon
the basis and by the methods of natural science.
Such attempts are like the efforts of a man trying to
build a steamboat, who should first drop the
steam-engine into the water, and then seek to build the
boat up about the engine so as to float it and be
driven by it. For natural science will indeed give
us the engine of our applied ethics, as indispensable
as the steam-engine to the boat. But first we
must lay the keel, and we must get the boat ready
for the engine, the ideal ready for the science that
is to apply it. All such attempts as those that put
the “scientific basis” first, lamely strive to conceal
their helplessness behind a show of appealing to the
“facts of human nature and of the social structure,
as science discovers them.” But these facts reveal
a confused warfare of aims among men, no one aim
being actually chosen by the whole of men. And
then the “scientific moralist” tries to show by all
sorts of devices that all men really have the same
aim. But he cannot show that, because it is not
true. What aim is common to the whole life of any
one of us? Much less then is any aim common to
all men. But this mistake is not specially modern. Not
only the modern scientific moralists have been guilty
of it, but moral preachers of all schools since
Socrates have been prone to insist on occasion, for
purposes of persuasion, that somehow or other all evil
conduct arises from mere ignorance of what one
wants. This view is a mistake. One may want
anything, and may know it very well. There is no
known limit to the caprice and to the instability of
the human will. If you find anybody desiring
anything, the only tolerably sure and fairly universal
comment is, that he will stop desiring it by and by.
You can seldom get any ultimate analysis of the
motive of such a desire.
But we do not found our moral system on any
such analysis. We do not say even that it is
physically possible for any of us to get and to keep the
moral insight long together. What we affirm can
once more briefly be summed up as follows: —
1. Moral insight, whenever, however, to whomsoever
it comes, consists in the realization of the true
inner nature of certain conflicting wills that are
actual in the world.
2. An absolute moral insight, which we can
conceive, but which we never fully attain ourselves,
would realize the true inner nature of all the
conflicting wills in the world.
3. The moral insight involves from its very nature,
for those who have it, the will to harmonize,
so far as may be possible, the conflicting wills that
there are in the world, and that are realized at the
moment of insight. 4. If the moral insight be concerned directly with
two conflicting wills, my neighbor’s and my own,
then this insight involves the will to act as if my
neighbor and myself were one being that possessed
at once the aims of both of us.
5. If the moral insight be concerned with conflicting
general aims, such as could express themselves
in systems of conduct, then the moral insight
involves the will to act, so far as may be, as if one
included in one’s own being the life of all those
whose conflicting aims one realizes.
6. Absolute moral insight would involve the will
to act henceforth with strict regard to the total of
the consequences of one’s act for all the moments
and aims that are to be affected by this act.
7. The moral insight stands in all its forms opposed
to ethical dogmatism, which accepts one separate
end only. The insight arises from the consciousness
that this one aim is not the only one that
is actual. Imperfectly and blindly ethical dogmatism
also realizes this truth, and so hates or even
anathematizes the opposing aims. But the hatred
is imperfect realization. The moral insight therefore
says to those who possess the dogmatic spirit:
“In so far as you seek a reason for the faith that is
in you, you can find none short of the assumption of
my position.” The moral insight says to itself, “I
ought not to return to the dogmatic point of view.”
So the moral insight insists upon giving itself the
rule, “Dogmatism is wrong.”
8. The only alternatives to the moral insight are:
(a) ethical dogmatism, which once for all gives up the effort to get any basis for ethics save its own
irrational caprice; and (b) ethical skepticism, which,
as we have seen, is only a preliminary form of the
moral insight, and passes over into the latter upon
reflection.
9. There is no other distinction between right and
wrong save what the dogmatic systems on the one
hand give as their capricious determinations, and
what the moral insight on the other hand shows as
the expression of what it involves.
Our conclusion so far is therefore this: Remain
blind if you will; we have no means of preventing
you. But if you want to know the whole ethical
truth, you can find it only in the moral insight. All
else is caprice. To get the moral insight, you must
indeed have the will to get the truth as between the
conflicting claims of two or more doctrines. This
will being given, the moral insight is the necessary
outcome even of skepticism itself.
Yet now, after all our argument and enthusiasm,
the reader must know that what we have so far
portrayed is only the most elementary aspect of the
moral insight. The unity that we have insisted upon
is so far an empty unity, a negative freedom from
conflict. To show the real worth of this whole view,
we must pass from the beggarly elements of duty to
more advanced conceptions. The moral insight must
be so developed as to tell us about the Organization
of Life. The empty unity must be filled with
content. We must discuss more in concreto what men
possessed of the moral insight will do.
Notes
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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